MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — Middle Tennessee State University invites students and the general public to hear the financial wisdom of “MoneyZen” author, consultant and financial planner Manisha Thakor on Wednesday, April 16, for her keynote remarks for this year’s Financial Literacy Month observance.

Thakor, founder of MoneyZen LLC, will speak from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Wednesday, April 16, in the Tennessee Ballroom of the James Union Building, 516 Alma Mater Drive. Her talk, titled “The Art and Craft of Financial Well-Being,” is free and open to the public and is part of the university’s annual observance of Tennessee Financial Literacy Month.

Sponsored again this year by the Jones College of Business’ Department of Economics and Finance, MT One Stop and Ascend Federal Credit Union, this year’s activities has featured events throughout the month to help students hone their financial and investment skills, highlighted by Thakor’s appearance.

A chartered financial analyst and certified financial planner, Thakor earned her undergraduate degree from Wellesley College, spent a year as a visiting student at Oxford University, and received her MBA from Harvard Business School.

Her most recent book, “MoneyZen,” “is geared toward mid-career women who are grappling with how to balance ambition around work, money, and accomplishments with a desire to ‘finding your enough’ by living a life rich in both in financial health and emotional wealth,” according to Thakor’s website.

“For a truly rich life, it’s essential to invest in both your financial health and emotional wealth. Learning how to nurture these two skillsets concurrently is the most direct path to creating a life that makes your heart sing. I call this practice … MoneyZen,” Thakor states on her website.

Thakor says she has spent over 30 years working in a wide range of roles in the financial services industry — from investing for institutions and providing financial life planning for individuals to serving on a Fortune 200 independent mutual fund board. Her work has been featured by CNN, NPR, Forbes, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal, among numerous other media outlets. 

For off-campus visitors attending the event, a searchable campus parking map is available at http://tinyurl.com/MTSUParkingMap.

The day before Thakor’s talk, MTSU students are invited to attend a panel of professionals who’ve earned the Certified Financial Planner, or CFP, designation who will describe how they prepared for the examination and how they use this professional certification in their career. The panel will meet from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 15, in Room S334 of the Business and Aerospace Building.

Organizers say several awards totaling $10,000 will be available to currently enrolled undergraduate MTSU students who’ve attended multiple Financial Literacy Month events, including the keynote, and submit a one- to two-minute video stating what they learned and how they will apply it in their lives. 

Students must attend and reflect upon the keynote address and at least one other Financial Literacy Month event in their video submission. The deadline to submit the video is Monday, April 21. Videos can be submitted through the Financial Literacy Month webpage at https://econfin.mtsu.edu/tnfinlitweek/.

For more information, email Keith Gamble, finance professor and director of the MTSU Data Science Institute, at Keith.Gamble@mtsu.edu.

— Jimmy Hart (Jimmy.Hart@mtsu.edu)